Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Britain’s Foreign Office – makes you ashamed to be British

Special constable Bonici Mompalda, of Maltese origin, lays dead in the road after being shot by EOKA terrorists, as his fiance Drosoulla Demetriadou sits close by. Photo: Bob Egby

PEOPLE / GUEST COLUMNIST / JOHN HUGHES-WILSON

On
31 August, during the hot summer of 1956, two British policemen were standing
guard on a well-known EOKA terrorist, Polykarpos Yorgadjis, in Nicosia GeneralHospital. Suddenly armed men rushed down
the corridor. The officers drew their pistols. Shots rang out. ‘The Battle of
Nicosia Hospital’ had begun.

Four
of Yorgadjis’s EOKA gang members were trying a desperate rescue attempt. In the
ensuing gun fight Serjeant Eden shot and killed one gunman and then beat
another to death with his gun. He received a George Medal. His colleague,
Police Sgt Leonard Demmon was not so lucky. He was shot dead.

Only
a month later three British police officers were walking down Ledra Street – Nicosia’s notorious
‘Murder Mile’ – when they were shot from in the back by an EOKA murder squad
led by Nicos Sampson.

Sgt Cyril Thorogood

Sgt
Hugh Carter from Herefordshire, and Sgt Cyril Thorogood (pictured) from Leicester and Rutland were killed.
Despite being hit five times, Worcestershire Police Sgt Webb survived the
attack. All three officers had volunteered to join the United Kingdom Police
Unit Cyprus, which was set up to supplement the existing Cyprus police during
the Cyprus Emergency, when EOKA’s Greek Cypriot terrorists fought to drive the
British colonial regime from the island by murdering British soldiers.

Policemen
were EOKA’s targets too. As a result a call went out for extra policemen. Many
Turkish Cypriots joined the Cyprus
police, as did 986 British policemen and women who volunteered to help the
local police in keeping the peace.

In
all, sixty two policemen were murdered by EOKA: 18 British; 25 Turkish
Cypriots; and 17 Greek Cypriots, as well as a Maronite and a Maltese officer.
They and the many civilians (including women and a doctor, shot in the back by
EOKA’s ‘heroic Freedom Fighters’) have long been the forgotten victims of the
deadly guerrilla war in Cyprus
from 1955 to 1960.

On
Saturday 8 November 2014, that historic wrong was righted. A memorial to all
the British, Turkish and Greek police officers who lost their lives in one of
Britain’s ‘small wars’, was unveiled in Kyrenia’s Old British cemetery by Sir
Hugh Orde, President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, representing
the 44 police forces of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The
memorial was funded by the Police Roll of Honour Trust, a British Charity, as
well as voluntary donations from UK police forces and individuals.
Its unveiling was attended not just by members of the public in Cyprus but by
widows and relatives of those police officers, to lay wreaths to those who lost
their lives long ago.

Naturally
the Police Roll of Honour Trust and Kyrenia’s Royal British Legion Branch
invited both the Greek and the Turkish communities to mourn their dead. The
Turkish Cypriot Police were represented by the TRNC’s Chief of Police in memory
of his Turkish Cypriot colleagues who paid the ultimate price for their loyalty
and duty.

Sadly
the bitter politics of the divided island intervened once again.

Despite
invitations to the Greek Cypriot administration, its police force and the
Orthodox Church, as well as the families of the dead Greek policemen to come to
the multi-faith ceremony, no-one from the Greek side attended. The sad truth is
that the so called heroes of EOKA and their propaganda version of the
historical facts prevailed once again.

In
a Greek Cypriot’s own words, “EOKA is a
sacred cow, no one dare touch it . . . people are brought up in schools where
EOKA is portrayed as a God sent liberator. . .”

EOKA's Polykarpos Yorgadjis, went on to be the Republic of Cyprus' Minister of Interior

In
1955 the local Cypriot police represented the colonial authority and so became
an easy target. Police stations were bombed and individual officers intimidated
if they did not sympathise with and assist EOKA's aims – ‘ENOSIS’, the union of
Cyprus and Greece, with the infamous rider, ‘first get the British and then the
Turks.’

The
Greek Cypriot policemen were particularly vulnerable. They had to live cheek by
jowl with known murderers, drink in the local coffee shop, collect their
children from school. If they did not get the message, their families were
threatened. Many Greek Cypriot policemen turned a blind eye to the murderous
men of violence.

Those
loyal policemen who refused to cooperate with the terrorists were killed,
wounded or ostracised as traitors and collaborators by EOKA. Today Greek
Cypriot apologists still excuse the murders of their own countrymen by
comparing them with collaborators like the French Vichy police. But for Greeks
to compare Britain’s benign
colonial rule on Cyprus with
the Nazi occupation of France
is just another big fat Greek lie.

However,
the Greek Cypriots were not the only major absentees from the unveiling of the
Memorial to the dead of the British Cyprus Police. Astonishingly there was no
official representation of Her Majesty’s Government. Confirming Maggie
Thatcher’s judgement of Whitehall as ‘that hotbed of cold feet’, a nervous
Foreign and Commonwealth Office decreed that no serving member of the police,
diplomatic or armed services could attend the unveiling in uniform to represent
The Queen and honour the policemen who died for Britain, because the memorial
was in The Republic of Northern Cyprus.

The
British High Commission kowtowed to Nicosia
as usual. Because of its ghastly experience when the High Commissioner actually
dared to turn up in 2009 to lay a wreath on behalf of the Queen at the
unveiling of the memorial to the 371 dead British servicemen, the British High
Commission once again ran scared of the Greeks. For the rest of his tour the
unfortunate High Commissioner Peter Millett was treated like a leper by the
Greek Cypriot administration: how dare a British Ambassador go to the Turkish
non-state (the “occupied territories”) in the North and commemorate dead British
soldiers? Who did he think he was?

But
it is too easy just to blame the high-priced help at the BHC for the weak-kneed
pusillanimity that passes for British diplomacy on Cyprus. Cosy
in their very well-funded staff jobs in Nicosia
,the BHC just want a quiet life.

The
real villains lurk in Whitehall, where the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office is more worried about offending Greeks than
recognising the dead who gave their all for Britain. Desperate to placate Athens to ensure Whitehall
gets Greek support in the next horse-trading vote in Brussels, the FCO adopted its usual spineless
pre-emptive cringe to matters Cypriot.

The
hypocritical weasel words came from the Minister Lidington himself: “We pay tribute to those who lost their
lives during the Emergency Period. . .But HMG’s focus on the island is
currently how to help

Cypriots achieve a better future
together, and we do this by supporting the UN-led settlement negotiations to
re-unify the island.”

The
High Commissioner and the British High Commission know they should hang their
heads in shame. But in Nicosia
they dare not do the right thing. Their only defence is to point at the
spineless FCO which has always, on its own admission, “had a bit of a blind spot on Turkey and the TRNC.”

Her
Majesty’s Government’s cowardly absence from the ceremony to honour the
murdered policemen is an insult to the dead: British, Greek and Turk, all of
whom died for Britain.

Last
Saturday, the FCO’s cowardice and hypocrisy made decent folk ashamed to be
British.

This article has been updated from
the original, which appeared in Cyprus
Today. Colonel John Hughes-Wilson (pictured) served in the British army's Intelligence
Corps and the Special Services, seeing action in Cyprus (where he was head of
Military Intelligence after the Occupation of 1974) ,in the Falklands, Arabia
and Northern Ireland- as well as what he describes as "the dangerous
jungles of NATO and Whitehall," which gives this article added authority.

He is an
internationally-acknowledged author and battlefield expert, a frequent
broadcaster for BBC TV, especially at the annual Cenotaph Remembrance service
,with David Dimbleby , and a member of the editorial board of RUSI, the Royal
United Services Institute, He lives in the TRNC.

About Me

Launched in April 2013, T-VINE is the UK's first & only English language consumer publication for British Turks and those interested in the world of Turks. Available quarterly in print and online daily, we cover news, culture, people, places, wellbeing, and lifestyle.